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Re: On bed

The phrase in bed is fixed. It's an idiom meaning resting or sleeping, whereas the phrase on (top of) the bed simply expresses a location.

Ex: Max is in bed. She is ill / She is sleeping / She is resting.
,Ex: Max is on the bed. That is where she is located.

What bothered me about the question was that it seemed to be putting the cart (rules) before the horse (language). "On the bed" requires an article because it does. One can dress it up with all sorts of grammatical paraphernalia* ("when 'on' is followed by a noun in an adverbial phrase, the noun should always be preceded by..." and blah-di-blah) but the usage is what it is.

*NB - I'm not saying that you did (that'd be ridiculous - you didn't), but some teachers do and some students think that this verbiage is explaining something.

Re: On bed

Originally Posted by BobK

What bothered me about the question [Why is 'on bed' considered wrong, as 'He is sleeping on bed'?] was that it seemed to be putting the cart (rules) before the horse (language). "On the bed" requires an article because it does.

But I think the poster knew that (I could be wrong of course).

What appeared to perplex the poster was this: if *on bed needs an article/determiner, then why doesn't in bed? Both in and on are prepositions, but only on requires a determiner-led noun as its object in that phrase, why is that?

The poster was doing what every learning no matter the subject should do: look at patterns and determine the similarites and differences, as this leads to connections, which in turn leads to a higher-level understanding of how the rules of the language work.